The Don’t-Miss List: ‘Treme,’ ‘Trouble With the Curve,’ Mumford & Sons and More

See it! Hear it! Read it! Do it! The best of movies, TV, music, books and beyond

Credit: by Paul Schiraldi | Courtesy of HBODelmond Lambeaux (Rob Brown) with his father Albert Lambeaux (Clarke Peters) in TREME about post-Katrina New Orleans on HBO.

TELEVISION

Treme Season 3 premiere
September 23, 10 p.m. ET, HBO

Genius/madman David Simon speaks frequently of the life-sucks-then-you-die worldview that compels his work. Brace yourself, then, for third season of Treme, which picks up two years post-Katrina. Just when the musicians, Mardis Gras Indians and working-class folk are struggling to right themselves, an onslaught of violence and vultures threatens to knock them back on their heels. Yet Simon does infuse the tragedy with triumph. The Season 3 poster sums up the allure of the series that celebrates the indefatigable spirit of America’s most soulful city: “Hurricanes. Floods. Exile. Crime. Corruption. Betrayal. Greed. Neglect. Is That All You Got?”

MOVIES

Trouble with the Curve Robert Lorenz

Being a living legend isn’t always all it's cracked up to be — as Clint Eastwood made clear with his empty-chair stunt at the Republican convention. His signature snarl can throw everyone off, including co-stars. While filming this heartstring-tugger about a broken-down baseball scout and his estranged, boomer daughter, Amy Adams says she had a tough time mustering the moxie to antagonize the infamous curmudgeon. ''I had to immediately jump in and be really sassy and sort of petulant to Mr. Eastwood,'' she told Entertainment Weekly. ''I really had to give myself a talking-up [just] to tell him off the first day. That was not an easy thing for me to do.''

WORTH THE TRIP

Apple picking at Kyokawa Family Orchards, Hood River Valley, Oregon

Travel + Leisure named this dreamy patch of land one of the 10 best places in America to pick your own. Snow-capped Mount Hood offers a spectacular backdrop and constant reminder of why the region produces such heavenly fruit: The mountain's base is surrounded by fertile soil and rarified glacier-fed water sources. This family-run orchard, which offers more than 80 varieties of apples and pears, is also notable for its origins: It was established in 1951 by Mamoru Kiyokawa, a first-generation Japanese farmer who was sent to an Oregon internment camp during World War II.

BOOKS

Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon

For someone obsessed with obsessives, there’s no better locus for a novel than the pocket universe of an old-school vinyl shop. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon sets his latest at Brokeland Records, whose co-owners Nat and Archy and assorted eccentrics endlessly dissect everything from Tarantino films and bear claws to soul jazz. Critics praise both the book’s substance — “a moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage” — and style, or what novelist Jennifer Egan in The New York Times calls its “showy bits,” most notably a 12-page sentence that includes the observations of an escaped parrot.

MUSIC

Babel, Mumford & Sons

Following up on their smash debut, Mumford & Sons aren't messing with the recipe for success. “The ingredients are very much the same: four core instruments and a lack of a drummer, which can give it that strange, simple, unique sort of sound," bassist Ted Dwane told Rolling Stone. But the British indie folk-rock band found a fresh way to cook up Babel. Many of the tracks were composed on the tour bus; some were recorded live. "The road has rubbed off into the album," Dwane says. "It's full of aliveness."